Who We Are
by Dixxy Mouri
Summary: Prequel to Consequences of Capture. All of the Ronins discuss their pasts and their present after the war with Talpa in a series of monologues. Complete.


Who We Are

By Dixxy Mouri

**Ryo**

I didn't ever think my existence was a happy one.

If everything had happened in the way that I guess it was supposed to, I would have grown up with my mom, my dad, and maybe some little brothers and sisters. My dad would have continued his work as a photographer, and my mother would have continued to teach art classes. As the oldest, I probably would have had to watch my little siblings, even if they annoyed me with constant questions and various pranks and games.

But it would have been a family.

Instead, I lost everything by the time I was six. My mother died while in labor - the doctors had to physically cut me out of her corpse so I could survive. Sometimes I wonder if I even should be alive after that. Heck, when I think about everything I've gone through a Ronin Warrior and all the times I've come close to dying, I wonder if it's because I should have died all those years ago before I even had the chance to live.

I don't remember very much from my early years, but I remember a little about my father. He always smelled like the outdoors and was always carrying a camera, even when he wasn't on the job. Although I still haven't quite figured out how I got them, I have a few shoe boxes filled with nothing but candid shots my father took of me when I was a baby and a toddler. Sometimes I feel like if I lined them all up in order they could be a flip book of my entire childhood, because he had EVERYTHING. Me sleeping when I was just a newborn. Me sitting up in a crib as a one-year old covered from head to toe in spaghetti sauce. Me as a two year old holding a soccer ball that I didn't yet know what to do with. Me as a three year old chasing a duck that had wandered into our front yard. Me as a four year old with finger paints all over the living room wall. Me as a five year old getting ready for my first day of kindergarten.

It was the day that last picture was taken that my father died - killed by a wild animal. Everyone assumed it was a rabid dog or a wolf or maybe a bear that had escaped from a local zoo a few days before, but all I remember is not being allowed to see my father's body and listening to a friend of his indentify my father.

And that was what left me alone. I had no other relatives to speak of. My father had not left any indication as to which of his friends or collegues he would have wanted me to live with, and as a result I spent the next eight years of my life drifting between foster homes, never finding a place where I was truly happy.

Although I did find someone who made me happy. I'd gotten lost after wandering away from my first foster home and found myself cornered by some wild dogs, growling at me in their murderous pack. I was scared and started to cry, afraid I was going to be eaten. I was only six years old - I didn't want to die like that. But in my mind at the time it made some sort of sense - my father had died like that, and maybe I was supposed to die that way, too.

As I was about to close my eyes and wait for the worst, I saw a flash of white and black fly before me - it was a tiger. The cat growled, sending the dogs away. I was about to cry then, too, before the big cat turned around and looked at me. He sat down on the ground, gently purring as he looked at me. Still crying, I reached out to touch him. And somehow, some way, I knew his name was White Blaze.

For the next several years, White Blaze showed up every once in a while - always when I was alone, and not always in danger. He wasn't exactly what I'd call stable, but I was always excited whenever I saw him. He was someone I knew would always comeback, even if I never knew exactly when he would show up.

No one believed White Blaze was real. It was probably why I was always sent away to different homes - no one wanted a crazy child. I was yelled at so many times by foster parents who told me to stop being a child and stop believing I had a tiger who followed me wherever I went. There were no tigers in Japan, after all. I was being silly.

I was institutionalized when I was thirteen.

I remained there for a year, being constantly scrutinized and tested by doctors and psychologists who tried to tell me White Blaze wasn't real. But more than ever I saw him outside of the hospital. I cried whenever I saw him. I knew he was real, but as long as I believed it I would be trapped inside of that prison.

On my fourteenth birthday, I was released from the institution. I was told my grandfather had come to pick me up. I was confused - I didn't have a grandfather. But I didn't want to say anything, or else I might be kept there for even longer. Whoever this man was, he was probably a lot better than the hospital. So, carrying what few belongings I had, I followed one of the doctors outside to where my "grandfather" was waiting.

I found myself staring at a man I had never seen before wearing a brown suits and a brown hat that covered his eyes. He nodded at me, extending his hand to me as he leaned on a golden cane. I accepted it, and he led me away from the institution, not saying a word to me as we walked to a destination I knew nothing about.

The old man led me into the woods, and then began to talk about a story I know all-too-well by now. He told me the bare bones of the legend of the mystical armors, telling me about how I was the bearer of an armor known as the Wildfire and that I was to lead four other armors bearers against a demon named Talpa and his evil Dynasty. Even after coming out of a mental institution, I wanted to ask him if he was crazy, but I kept my mouth shut.

Especially after he led me to White Blaze.

For the next two years the Ancient One gave me a place to live - a small apartment in a small city in Japan. I rarely saw him, and whenever I did see him it was only to make sure that I was keeping the apartment in shape and that I wasn't giving the landlord any trouble, as well as making sure I was well. He never told me anything about the armors or how to train, other than cryptically telling me that he would be doing me no favors by spoon-feeding me information. It made me angry, but I was in debt to him.

Now the Ancient One is gone and I'm living with Mia and the other Ronins. I love it here. White Blaze shows himself to everyone and no one thinks I'm crazy. I don't talk about what happened with the others - it's a part of my past that I don't like to talk about, although I'm sure everyone has something they'd rather not discuss. Even with as close as everyone's gotten, I can tell that everyone has a secret.

That's probably one reason we went on this camping trip in the first place - to try and learn things about each other that we didn't already know. If we could open up to each other, then maybe, just maybe, we could help Sage, Cye, and Kento escape from the memories tormenting them every night.

It was Mia's idea. She told us she wanted us to think about something that haunts us - something about ourselves that we don't understand or don't want to talk about. It would be like lifting a burden off of our shoulders, and maybe it would help make the nightmares go away. It would help Rowen and I understand the other three, and the other three get on with their lives.

I thought it would be a good idea.

**Sage**

I've spent my life trying to separate myself into two different people - Sage the Date and Sage the Person.

It sounds stupid that I have trouble associating with myself as a person and a member of my family, but it's true: I can't be both at the same time. I've lived these past fifteen years being pulled between the two extremes and it really, really sucks. I feel like these two people can't coexist in the same body and yet I have no choice but to do it anyways. It's at the point where I think I might crack one of these days.

My family doesn't exactly help with this. The Date clan is filled with a deep, rich history of pride, honor, and tradition. It's all I've heard. _Pride. Honor. Tradition. Train harder. Fight better. Be a man. Don't marry beneath you. Your family is everything. You are nothing without your family. We are who you are. You're not good enough - don't stop until you're perfect._

_And dye your damn hair._

It's not my fault my hair is blond - I was born that way. We don't control what our bodies are programmed to do. It's just what I am - blond. But thanks to certain stereotypes, my parents were afraid not only because blond hair is very un-Japanese, but it's also associated with being stupid. Flakey. Ditzy. Not smart. Certainly not what they would want for the heir of the Date name.

And yet I always did well in school, I made relatively good decisions, and was basically a smart, decent kid. But all of the adults around me would jump on me the minute I made a mistake. In school, someone could have failed the test but my B+ was made an example off. If I mis-stepped while I was training, I was yelled at and sometimes forced to spend an hour in the dark basement because I was a stupid fool.

For a while, I believed it.

When I was eleven, I got frustrated one afternoon - I just needed to let loose for an hour or two. Forget about being traditional and proper. Forget about practicing. Just be me. So I put on an old t-shirt and a pair of jeans that had been ripped after tripping and falling on pavement, then headed into the deep woods surrounding our house.

I don't know where I got the idea - I guess it was fate, though, that I found the big mud hole. It wasn't very big - maybe a half-foot deep, about ten yards wide. It was thick and had the consistancy of pudding, - it smelled like wet grass, so I decided it was "safe" to go in.

In an instant of not caring about traiditon, I walked out to the center - now calf-high in mud - and sat down. It was a strange sensation, and I dipped my hands in the mud. It was cold, but not entirely unpleasant. I smiled and laid down. I laughed. This was so silly, so pointless, that I couldn't help but enjoy myself. It was as if I was the only person in the world and I had this mud puddle all to myself, and it was great.

That was the day the other dynamic of my life had a fighting chance - it was the day I met Rowen. He found me in that mud puddle and decided to play with me. I was nervous at first, but I agreed to it and we had a blast until my father found us. Was he ever pissed! He started screaming at us both (particularly me) and dragged us behind the house so he could strip us naked and spray us down with the garden hose.

See, Rowen's mom was a reporter who was doing a story on our family, so she'd come over to interview my parents and my grandfather about the history of the clan from, well, our clan's perspective. She was also a divorced mother who had her son for the weekend (Rowen's dad had primary custody because his job required less travel), and she'd brought him along. Being the kind of kid he was, though, Rowen decided to go off on and his own and found me. I guess he might be the reason I was found out, but I didn't care. For once, there was someone who wasn't overly concerned with how well I could perform.

Before he left, Rowen slipped me his phone number and told me to call him that night.

We talked for three hours.

And so the battle between Sage the Date and Sage the Person began. Sage the Date continued to compete in tournaments, train, and do his best to be the model all-around person in school and at home. Sage the Person snuck out of the house to see Rowen, go the mall and the movies, and play video games (he got me addicted - big time - to the Final Fantasy series). Sage the Date was responsible, disciplined, and a model son. Sage the Person got into a little trouble with Rowen, resulting in some experimentation with punk clothing and losing his virginity to a girl whose name he didn't know he met at a concert (and to the best of my knowledge my parents still don't know about that).

But over time, as Rowen and I found a place in our lives that kept us both out of trouble (to a certain degree) and relatively happy, we both started to get this overwhelming feeling that there was something else we were meant to do. Rowen, who was previously not interested in any of the training I did at the family dojo, started asking me for private lessons (we didn't think my parents liked him too much after the mud incident). Sometimes I felt like I was being followed, but saw no one around.

That's a damn fine way to creep a kid out.

Things actually started to make more sense once we found our armor orbs - something as fantastic and being able to summon magical armor made us realize that, as much as we didn't want it to, things were getting bad. Bad in a way that neither of us realized was imaginable until we actually had to fight the Dynasty (alongside Ryo, Kento, and Cye).

Trouble is. . . it was right around then that I learned something I didn't think I wanted to know.

Rowen and I planned to leave late at night on a very specific day - that afternoon, I was helping my grandfather with some papers in the family office - he was looking for some medical form, I think. But as I was looking through some stuff, I found folder that had a lot of papers with my name on them. I asked my grandfather about it and the look in his eyes was almost frightening as he grabbed the folder and stormed out of the room without what he'd asked for.

I was stunned. That wasn't like my grandfather. Certainly he had his moments where he was harsh on me as well, but to just grab something and run off without explanation? I wanted to ask him about it at dinner, but he didn't show up - he ate in his room, and my mother said that he didn't want to be bother. Part of me wanted to ask her and my father, but I decided against it.

That night, as I was about to leave, my grandfather stopped me at the door. _"Grandpa?"_

_"We. . . need to talk."_

He sat me down in the living room and handed me an older newspaper. When my eyes glanced the headline and the picture of the baby in the arms of a police officer, I felt sick to my stomach and almost started crying. _"Infant boy found at Date family dojo - parents whereabouts unknown,"_ I said slowly. I looked up at my grandfather, and he solemnly nodded. _"This. . . this was me!?"_

_"When the authorities were unable to determine where you came from, they offered you to the couple who found you,"_ he said. He took my hand and dropped something into it - a golden chain with a small charm that looked like a pair of wings. _"I thought you deserved to have this. We aren't sure exactly what it is, but I believe it's yours. They found you with this, a basket and a blanket, and-"_

_"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?"_

My grandfather and I turned to see my parents standing in the door frame, a look of horror on my mother's face and fury on my father's. I stood up to say something, but my grandfather was a bit quicker and put his arm out in front of me. My father stepped forward, starting to yell at his elder. _"What is the meaning of this!? We told you we never wanted him to find out! What have you done?!"_

_"You were never going to tell me about this!?" _I said in shock.

_"Of course not - you are our son,"_ my father said.

_"Why couldn't you be honest with me about this?!"_

_"Because we wanted you to focus on your studies and caring for the dojo,"_ said my mother, stepping forward with a smile and a hand on my shoulder. _"The family line will be carried on by your sisters - I'm afraid you will never marry - and your job will be to train their children and run the dojo until they are old enough to do so themselves. At that point you will be allowed to live quietly and peacefully."_

I dropped my jaw. _"What?"_

_"You should be thankful that we took you in - who else would have?"_ said my father.

_"You never told me I was adopted and now you expect me to just sit here and be told how I'm going to spend the rest of my life KNOWING that I was lied to?"_ I said. I couldn't believe the argument we were having. Granted, I knew I was likely to be running the dojo but I didn't realize that was the ONLY thing I'd be running. _"You're telling me that I get no say in what I'm doing for the rest of my life? What if I want a career outside of the dojo like you do? What if I want to get married and have a family?"_

_"We've explained it to you - you owe us your life, and you will obey us to pay back your debt."_

Thank got me angry. I grabbed my backpack and started to head for the door. _"Sage Date!"_

_"I have somewhere I need to be,"_ I said as calmly as I could, my hand on the door.

I could hear my father's deep voice. _"If you walk out that door. . . don't expect to come back in."_

I didn't look back after slamming it behind me._  
_

**Cye**

It's hard to not know who you are. I look in the mirror and wonder where I came from.

Not that I don't know anything at all - I know who my mother is. She's a wonderful woman that I owe so much. My mother is an older woman who's sick all the time because of a heart condition - something I guess she'd had for a while even before I came around. But when I looked at the mothers of the other children my age as I grew up, I couldn't help but notice her hair was a little whiter and the lines on her face were a little more frequent. It isn't easy being just fifteen years old and having a mother who's pushing sixty.

My mother was in her early forties when she found out she was pregnant with me - a problem in and of itself. Her doctor reminded her that delivering a baby in her current state of health and her age might not be a good idea. She already had a girl, and he encouraged her to get an abortion for the sake of her life and the life of my older sister. As it was her husband had died months earlier, and she would be alone with a teenager and a baby.

That's why no one was sure who my father was.

After my mother was widowed, she'd become slightly alcoholic in her grief. My older sister was often left with our shared grandmother, and I've heard stories about some of the trouble she got into after she'd been drinking. She'd been arrested a few times, I guess, and got quite out of hand when she was drunk. But my conception was the worst of it - now she was pregnant with a bastard child whose father she couldn't even place a face, never mind a name to.

But despite the doctor's warnings, she said that she was going to have me. She said there was no reason for me to be punished because of her actions.

And sure enough, my birth had taken a serious toll on her health - just as the doctor had expected. I was perfectly fine, but my mother spent the first several months of my life in a hospital - my grandmother and my sister had to take care of me. But despite how weak and fragile she'd become as a result of my life, she was so happy to have a little boy to call her own even if she had no husband to share him with.

So I grew up with a very sick mother, and as a child I didn't understand why. Somehow I guess I just accepted that was the way my mother was, and on some level I probably thought all mothers were like that because it was what I knew. But as I got older and saw other mothers doing things I knew my mother couldn't, I slowly began to realize something was wrong.

And over time I began to understand the truth. I was told about how my mother didn't know who my father was and that the pregnancy had taken a toll on her health but that I shouldn't blame myself because it was her decision to have me. It still made me feel bad and I thought I was a burden to my mother.

I seriously considered running away so she wouldn't have to take care of me. Part of me even thought that maybe if I left, she'd get better. Then she could be a good mother to my older sister and she could do the things I saw other people do. She wouldn't be held down by me anymore.

Of course the one time I did try running away she got even more sick because she was worried about me. I was ten years old and disappeared for abut five hours before a police officer found me and brought me back home, where we learned that my mother had to be taken to the hospital.

But even after that I still felt like a burden, and I started looking for other ways to make myself not a burden. I started doing a lot of things around the house - I took up most of the cooking and did a lot of the cleaning. I wouldn't allow my mother to lift a finger if I could help it. I told her that I didn't want to be a burden, but she would always smile and tell me I wasn't.

I finally found a solution to my problem.

It was a unique opportunity to study and live in a foreign country starting with the first year of junior high and ending after high school graduation. Since my mother would know where I was, she wouldn't need to worry, and I wouldn't be her burden anymore (although now my sister would need to pick up the chores I would be leaving behind). I discussed it with her, and she told me that if I wanted to do it I should.

So I did, and when I was just eleven years old I was on my way to spend the next several years of my life in Japan.

The first year was all right - I lived with a somewhat cold family who I got the idea didn't like me too much. They didn't talk to me much and I, in turn, really didn't talk much with them after a while because I saw no point in it. Eventually they gave me a complete brush off and informed me they didn't want me to live in their house anymore, so I took what I could carry and left.

Of course this wasn't a good idea - I was twelve and alone in a country that spoke a language I barely understood. I walked for a couple of hours, took a bus for another hour, and finally ended up a prefecture or two away from my original location, where I wandered around some more until I ended up face to face with a gang of delinquents who were ready to kick my ass and take everything I had.

That is, until Kento showed up.

Kento had been out looking for his family's dog when he ran into the situation I was in and tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to protect me. He said it wasn't right for them to pick on someone as small as I was, especially since I still couldn't speak Japanese very fluently. The fight ended when the dog, who happened to be a German Shepard, showed up and scared the gang away.

That's how I ended up living the with Rei Fuangs for as long as I did. They took me in when the other family tossed me out and gave me a warm, happy home environment. I had someone my age to spend some time with and became very close with - Kento blurs a line between "best friend" and "brother" in my eyes. His parents treated me like one of their own be it for family celebrations or punishments. I was basically just another one of their small pack of children. I was treated exactly like the others - I got the same praise for good things and the same punishments for bad things. The only difference in treatment was the way they spoke to me for the first year or so, and that was purely because of the language barrier. I was even included in those studio family photos.

And I liked this new family. It was so different from what I was used to, but I loved it. To me, I felt wanted. I didn't feel like a burden here, possibly because there was already a lot of children in the family, one mouth might not make such a big difference - in many ways, some things went a little smoother because now there was another set of hands to help out around the house and the restaurant.

But soon enough, as I'm sure you're aware, Kento and I figured out that we were being called to something, found our armors, and needed to go fight. Forcing me from a home I was happy in to face the unknown, and I was scared. I didn't want to fight, even though part of me knew I had to.

And now I have a new family all over again - this time with Ryo, Mia, and the others. Kento and I are sharing one room with Ryo, Rowen, and Sage crammed into another room, and Yuli in another, sometimes with White Blaze. I feel really happy here, and I feel like I've done some good. I'm not being a burden to my mother here, and I've helped save the world. It's done wonders for me.

I don't want this to end.

**Kento**

It isn't easy being unsure of the world around you.

I don't remember a whole lot of my childhood - sometimes when I try to think about it, it's like a badly edited clip show. I remember little things, like maybe being in a car with my father, or chasing a puppy around the yard. But I can't seem to remember much before I was seven, and it kind of freaks me out. I can remember little details, like my fifth birthday cake (it looked like Goku from Dragon Ball) or running through my yard, but for a long time it just felt like there were blank spots.

It's weird seeing pictures of yourself at family gatherings and birthday parties and not being able to remember being there. It's almost like looking at your doppleganger, who's taken your place at all these family gatherings. And it really sucked, but for the most part I just didn't say anything. What could I say without people thinking I was crazy?

So I suffered in silence.

Well, mostly. I think my mom and dad picked up on the fact that I didn't remember a lot of things. My mom would ask me about, I don't know, if I remembered what happened at some family event, and I wouldn't be able to remember, or my dad would show me some old toy he wanted to pass-down to one of my little siblings, but I couldn't remember that, either. Eventually people (not my family, thankfully) just came to the conclusion that I was stupid.

I was big, stupid Kento.

And sometimes I just went along with it. People would tell me to do things I didn't want to do, but I did them anyways because I was stupid enough to do it. I ate things I shouldn't have. I fell for pranks that could have gotten me into serious trouble (and sometimes did). I was the guy that, if people wanted to be entertained by someone doing something dumb, the kid would go to. Why? Because I was big and dumb.

And over time I didn't think about it. Over time I stopped thinking about whether or not I should say "no". I stopped thinking, I guess. I became a creature who acted almost exclusively on impulse. I did things without question (which was okay in the family because if my mom needed my help with something she knew I'd always say yes - I just don't think she understood WHY I stopped thinking about it). I was obedient for a little while.

All I did was get fat and do stupid things.

Of course by the time I was ten and kids started to make fun of me because of my weight, of course I got upset and cried a few times because I didn't want to be the fat kid and get made fun of anymore, but I also got angry and started working out and learning to fight. Suddenly all of that fat started to turn into muscle. I was still pretty big, but I was big for a very different reason. I was suddenly one of the strongest kids in school

And for a little while I was, well, violent.

Now I had a new role - I was the big stupid kid who would play bodyguard or get into fights. And what a rush those fights were! I loved it! I loved getting into it and throwing punches and even getting punched! It was all part of the thrill of getting into it with other kids. I loved winning, but I felt a surge of passion when I lost, because then I needed to train harder to take out the guy who beat me.

It was a good thing I found Cye when I did. He was a skinny, lost kid who barely spoke Japanese without a place to go. I guess I felt bad for him, because I brought him home and, well, my mom took right to him. She couldn't turn down someone as pathetic as Cye was at that moment. And not to insult him, but the poor guy was. He didn't have much in terms of personal possessions, he could barely speak Japanese (it's a very good thing my dad, being the businessman he is, speaks, like, five languages, including English), and he was kinda skinny and a little dirty.

And suddenly there was another kid in the house, and it was kind of cool. I had the first real best friend of my life. Cye and I are really close, and we're good compliments for each other. I helped him find a voice, and he was something of a voice of reason for me. He got me to back down and walk away from a lot of fights. . . but not all of them. Still, we did a lot together, and we were almost like real brothers.

Cye helped me find a little bit of inner piece, but it didn't calm the beast inside of me. I know what I was like when we were fighting Talpa - I still did a lot of stupid things, almost got myself and my friends killed, and all for what? A fight? Even when I went to try and rescue Sage and Cye (boy, was that ever a failure), part of me wonders just how much importance I would have put on a fight, had one occured. At times things were like a game for me - I didn't always remember that game over was really. . . game over.

What made me figure out I needed a reality check was Dais. Okay, so that was his intent, I guess, but it made me see how different I was from the other Ronins. Ryo's the only one who was even close to being as get up and go about fighting as I was, after all. Rowen and Sage were the voice of reason. Poor Cye just stayed quiet and out the way sometimes.

And then Mia would verbally beat us into a corner and we'd go with her idea.

But still. . . he made me see just how much emphasis I put on a fight - more than once. I almost killed Sage once, and that time in the subway? I don't think Rowen knew what to do with me after that fiasco was over. But every time something happened, I started thinking more and more about what I was doing to my friends and myself, and I started to see a lot of problems with myself that needed to be corrected if I wanted to survive the war with all my friends intact.

I know I need to find something to calm me down, but I don't know what I can do.

Well, at the moment, I do know what I need to do - we're all going camping in a few days to try and get over some of the trauma from the war with Talpa. After all, Sage, Cye and I. . . it wasn't fun in there. It really sucked, and it's having an effect on us. Dreams that won't stop haunting us. . . it's getting really bad. Sometimes they just seem to get worse and worse, and we might wake up screaming or worse.

I can't live like this. And I can't live with the fight crazy beast inside.

But for now. . . I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep without having to go back to that place again.

**Rowen**

It actually kind of sucks being a so-called "genius".

People don't look at you like you're normal - they look at you in awe or contempt because they know they can't do some of the things that you can do. I felt like I was seen as something other than human. I was the smart kid. I was the super genius. I was some kind of teacher's pet in their eyes even though I wouldn't be surprised if some of my teachers were just frustrated with me because I probably knew more than they did in some cases. How does a teacher do something with a student who's smarter than they are, after all?

But most of all I wasn't like them.

Oh sure, sometimes the other kids approached me. They wanted help with their homework (or sometimes they wanted me to DO their homework), or they wanted me to work with them as a lab partner or in other multi-person projects. They wouldn't want to hang out with me after school unless it was to help their grades. I wasn't sometime to be friends with - I was someone to use. No hanging out at someone's house to play video games or go out for an ice cream. Nope. Not Rowen.

And it's lonely.

I mean, I didn't even really have my parents all the time. They were divorced, for one, and both of them were really involved with work. Mostly I lived with my dad, and he's a busy research scientist, so he was at work a lot. My mom had a small apartment in the same building my dad and I lived in, but she's a reporter and she travels all over the world - sometimes she's gone for months on assignments. Once in a while I got to go with her and I loved it when we got to do that, but of course I had school so I couldn't go all the time.

So I spent a lot of my childhood in my room, reading and studying.

Then I met Sage, and well, you already read about that already.

But seriously? Sage might have been one of the best things that ever happened to me - er, not in the romantic way (I like the ladies). Suddenly I had someone to talk to - granted, Sage doesn't have the mental capacity I do, but he was still pretty smart and we did stuff together. I don't know if his parents ever knew about it, but we did all sorts of things together. We both finally had something resembling a social life.

And then the war with Talpa happened.

Now I'm suddenly in a situation where it's not just me and Sage anymore - there's a group of us. Now we've got Ryo and Kento and Cye and Mia and Yuli, and it's different. I'm getting used to some other things, like having a friend closer in the same grade (Ryo and I are a year ahead of the other guys scholastically) as well as people like Mia, who's closer in intelligence to me, and Yuli, who's a little kid.

It's a little strange having a more prominent mother figure in Mia, which she kinda is - she's like our big sister or our mom a lot of the time. She's so much more open about things with me than my own mother is, which I can't help but find a little odd. I mean, my father's parents died when I was really little (cancer, I think), but I never met any of my mom's family, which based on stories from some of the others seemed a little. . . odd. I don't even think Kento could wrap the concept around his head because his immediate and extended family are all so close. Sage's grandfather lived with him, and Cye had stories about his mother's mother doing thing like babysitting him or making him cookies when he was a kid. Even Ryo had pictures and stories about his family.

It's almost like my mom just. . . doesn't HAVE a family.

The best I can figure is that, well, she was really young and not married when she found out she was pregnant with me. And my dad's a lot older than her. Best I can figure she got into some kind of argument with her family over me, and sometimes I blame myself for her not seeing them for so long. I mean, she had to have a mother at some point, right?

I never asked about it - something about asking her never seemed like a good idea, which my father confirmed to me one day. He'd been married to the woman and had never so much as seen any sign of her parents. I mean, wouldn't parents want to meet the man their daughter is going to marry? Okay, maybe the whole getting her pregnant first thing might have added some ice to the situation, but still. . . he didn't just run away.

I think we're all got some things we don't want to talk about from our pasts. I guess the thing with my mom would be mine. And overall, it's not so bad. Both of my parents love me very much and try to make time for me when they can. Isn't that what's important? So what if I'm not exactly sure who my mother is. . . she's still my mother.

But I guess my mom isn't the center of my problems right now. Right now, Sage, Cye, and Kento are going through something really, really bad - they're being plagued by nightmares from when Talpa had them kidnapped and tortured. I hate seeing Sage waking up in tears and screaming for it to stop, or occasionally hearing Kento mumbling in his sleep, or seeing Cye go downstairs at three in the morning to try and calm his nerves. It's not right that they're still suffering like this when Ryo and I are fine. Sure we get the occasional nasty dream, but they aren't nearly as frequent as what's happening to the others.

It's really hurting them, and Mia, Ryo and I have realized we need to do something.

And that's why we've decided we're all going to go camping and have a blast in the woods for a little while.

* * *

Author's Notes 

Some of you may recognize this as a chapter of "Freedom", but it's not - it was accidentally posted and I didn't catch it until two reviews later (and I think Triple C started talking about Ryo and I was like "wah?"). Worse, what was posted was unfinished. It was originally supposed to be a chapter one for CoC, but I decided to make it a stand alone prequel to the entire Age of Legends saga.

Oh yeah, long time readers of the Age of Legends series will probably really like the next Freedom chapter.

I'm wondering if some of these tragic pasts are a result of my adoration for _One Piece_ because almost EVERYONE in that series has some kind of horrible trauma in their past.

This fic was written almost entirely - if not ACTUALLY entirely - online in document editor. It also took quite a while to write.

**Ryo**: I don't do a whole lot with Ryo, and part of his section was me trying to write Ryo because I just don't do it often. He's probably my least favorite of the Ronins, though that's not to say I don't like him. It's like they're all different flavors of ice cream. Just because it's not my favorite flavor doesn't mean I won't eat it.

**Sage**: It's old hat by now that in the Senshi universe, Sage was adopted, but at times its suggested he doesn't get alone with his parents and they wanted to disown him. Just finding out you were adopted seemed extreme to me, so I decided the "let's control the remainder of his life aspect" was better. I realize Sage is possibly one of the most radically changed characters in terms of what he was like in the series and what he's like in my stories - especially this one.

There was also a slight plot hole created with this story that I actually did go back into Consequences of Capture to fix because, frankly, I liked this idea a lot better. Part of Sage's panic leading to his suicide attempt was that he felt he was perceived as some kind of sex object despite being a virgin or, at the very least, most likely a virgin (the sentence I had to change wasn't quite a concrete "Sage is a virgin" statement as it was still possible he had made the first move in some cases but shot down anyone who tried to make the first move). Instead, where in this story it's revealed yes, he has been with a girl, it makes this self doubt much more reasonable and believable, especially since this was a one-night stand with a girl whose name he does not know.

**Cye**: Once again, old news. Yes, I did bring up abortion, and it's kind of a reflection on my own views, and it is a complicated, sticky issue. My position changes depending on the situation, so I'm not completely pro-choice or pro-life. I have found the fence for this issue and I am sitting on it.

**Kento**: Glad I went with the angle I did.

**Rowen**: In the accidental posting, his part was a sentence long. It's now much longer.


End file.
